Jeremiah 31:20 – Favor, Even in Formation

Is Ephraim My dear son?
Is he a pleasant child?
For though I spoke against him,
I earnestly remember him still;
Therefore My heart yearns for him;
I will surely have mercy on him, says the Lord. Jeremiah 31:20, New King James Version

I was in awe of my little brother early. I knew he had a fluidity of intellect I did not possess. More daunting, he seemed free of concern over comparisons. Whatever I learned by what I felt was rigor and focus, I needed to show someone, or show up someone, in order for the prize to be complete. Brent, though, was always secure being himself.

Now, when he was nine and I was 12, he was putting those gifts into particularly adult action. Slight and blond, he was nevertheless atop a massive tractor. He was making things get. Ever the indoorsmen, I watched from afar, both in terms of physical distance and perspective. Lamenting and admiring at once, I spoke aloud that he was going to accomplish great things.

My dad, somehow trusting Brent to operate the tractor without immediate supervision, was close enough to hear me. Dad wouldn't let any incomplete idea of what one son was and the other was not Hanging in the air. "I'm sure God has great plans for you too," he said.

My dad was and is more analytical than effusive, but the affirmation has a Jeremiah 31:20 resonance 35 years later. There, the Father of fathers confronts more than speculative insecurity. He confronts a played-out history of failure and disobedience by the tribe of Ephraim. His grace brought conviction over such failures. His grace uprooted and exiled, and His grace will bring Ephraim home. Even convinced that God will finish what He started, even identifying that God was HIS God, there lingers over the human consciousness the prospect of being a project, a projection of probabilities set forward by the Great Actuary.

Any coldness of this sense on Ephraim's part, or ours, is melted by the evident affection of Jeremiah 31:20. Adjectives abound to show a state of the heart, a shining countenance beyond a cold, clinical rehabilitation plan. There is the claim of sonship, not only unearned sonship but the declaration for the ages that God takes PLEASURE in His sons and His daughters, undiminished and perhaps in some sense deepened by the corrections He brings us through.

Formal magnanimity might decline to speak of fits, and starts, and corrections, but God, Father God, actually brings them up as part of the bonding narrative. I spoke against him, but even then My thoughts toward him were flavored with favor. I liked what he was, and I saw what he was going to be. God speaks in the vernacular of vision.

It takes a certain security for God to declare yearning. He is complete in Himself. He admits no lack. There was no real brooding, no lingering regret in Ephraim's unwillingness to fulfill Him. Yet YEARNING is the translator's closest human word to what God expresses. It's the WHY in Him to which mercy is the outward expression.

Of course I am going to follow through with mercy, God insists. I've brought Ephraim this far, He might have added. I'm not going to stop now. Ephraim's surety, security, and the Christian's with him, is in God's character, not in the likelihood of our short-term efforts at reform. His mercy, Scripture says elsewhere, ABOUNDS. He won't run out. It's inextricable from Who He is, and who He is toward each tribe and each individual among His people in particular.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Enthusiasm, Even If We Have To Work At It

On Fixer Upper, a real estate renovation show, perpetually upbeat contractor Chip Gaines faces the usual list of hassles incumbent in his work with the reflection that his father's greatest gift to him was to show him that work could be fun. Conversely, as I asked my usual questions of a new acquaintance in Bible study about what he looks for in new hires, he shared separately that enthusiasm can't be trained. I can't, he said, teach you to have fun at your job. The two insights are not necessarily contradictory. Chip's father had a prolonged impact on his attitude toward work at a time when Chip's child heart was as flexible as the body of an infant who can peacefully fall asleep in postures an adult would find uncomfortable if not crippling. The cafeteria manager spoke to the rest of us who either were not presented with that inspirational outlook or who have been distracted from that by work's more aggravating aspects. For those of us who don't come b
Read more

A Hobby Or A Habit?

Chris is a firefighter's firefighter.  He is passionate about the equipment. He is passionate about the people he gets to help. He is passionate about the honor of a career in the fire service. He is passionate enough to attend a training to sharpen his skills on his vacation time. When a college kid at the same training referred to firefighting as a hobby, Chris was not passionate in affirming that kind of divided enthusiasm. Would he have my back, Chris questioned? Would he rescue someone on the second floor if doing so involved in some personal risk?   Chris didn't have a chance to ask these questions or confront this attitude during the brief training. Perhaps someone else in a more long-standing relationship with this kid will have the opportunity fo model professionalism and to extend it to confrontation where necessary. If not, the progression is predictable, and extends far beyond firefighting. Observing a similarly nonchalant attitude in a young pitcher, Michael Lew
Read more

While It Is Still Called Today

About a month ago, my brother was in an auto accident. When I asked about subsequent trouble with his back, he was philosophical. What happened, he said, was that my back tightened in order to protect my spinal cord. Now, anytime I'm under stress or try to lift anything, even something small, the same response kicks in. I have to retrain myself. Retrain himself he did. A lifelong independent person and freethinker who tends to shun accolades or confirmation from the crowd, on social media or otherwise, he nevertheless posted a picture on Facebook of his graduation from physical therapy. He could now return to work. Perhaps it was in the spirit of celebrating the celebratory, the completion of his first week back on the job with the shift that ended about 11, that he decided to defy middle-age and go to hear his uncle's band. When he left, it was raining heavily. The car was new to him. It collided with a concrete barrier. He totaled the car and broke a couple ribs, but human vu
Read more